A glorious finish!

Phew, well we did it. Last night was an organisational triumph. Glad I had done so much in advance and worked out teams/delegated roles etc for every half hour slot because it was all quite mental. Having said that, the kids were amazing - really focused despite their palpable off-the-scale levels of excitement. All the family members came as hoped. A nice mix of brothers, sisters, mums, dads and even two grandparents. Everyone seemed quite relaxed and happy to be there and not awkward as I feared - to be in a church building etc. I advertised the Good Friday children's service and 7 out of 20 kids are coming. (I'm making hot cross buns as part of the service.)

A friend (one of the mums) commented that at some of the messy church things she's seen, you never gets the adults eating with the kids which is a shame. Too early plus other family members needs feeding at home later anyway. Therefore it felt really special to have everyone sitting down and eating together last night. You couldn't do it every week but the gift of last night is that we were able to make it feel special - like a family meal out to celebrate something. Tablecloths, menus, music in the background, flowers on the table, schloer to drink all helped. The church warden kindly bought all the kids in the club an easter egg each to say thank you for their hard work which led to much jumping up and down with excitement. One child had even bought me a present to say thanks.

Washing/clearing up took ages, sabataged somewhat by drinking champagne with the team toward the end to celebrate all we'd achieved. And my brain is still a bit scrambled now from the intensity of it and how well it went. Thanks again to all who helped - I couldn't have done it without you. So here ends my pioneering project for now. Just got to add up the final sums and think about feeding back to my funders/course mates. All good.

One day to go...

One day til the madness begins...the last session (boo hoo) of cookery club is tomorrow to which parents, siblings, grandparents are invited to stay for a meal the kids have prepared at 5pm (normal pick up time). The kids are SO excited. They keep coming up to me in the playground when I drop Natalie off in the morning to talk about it.

I am pleased to say that I have come through my sleepless night phase and the general sense of panic I was feeling last week about cooking so much food in such a small oven in such little time. I've got it all planned out to the last spring of parsley. Now I say...bring it on.

Mexican

I think the session last week was the best one yet. I felt the balance of fun and calm was just right. I gave them a fairly complicated recipe (nachos and vegetable fajitas) and they coped well. They washed up without asking although they needed a bit of nagging to finish tidying their work space. I had a craft ready for the early finishers as a distraction from the usual climbing the walls and falling over each other. It's a shame they can't all work at the same speed like robots, really… (only kidding) but there is something annoying about the kids with more energy and speed taking up more of your attention because you've got to remind them to stop chasing about or find things they can do while the slower ones catch up. Some of my slower members are so sweet and I would love to be able to give them more time as they tell me things that are happening in their lives.

My thoughts are now consumed with the final session in 10 days time which is the meal they've invited their families to. It's a logistical nightmare. I was awake from 1-5am on Thursday night scribbling down times, menus and table plans. We're feeding a 3 course meal to 50...I must be mad...

Just read this morning a transcript of Archbishop of Canterbury's talk at a conference a few weeks ago in Lincoln. Really good, I thought. He reminds us that projects like these shouldn't be about entertainment, problem-solving or quick fixes. I'll email it to anyone who's interested.

Salmon and mango salsa

Last Thursday's session went well, I think. The main cooking bit went extremely well. I emphasised at the beginning that I wanted a calm and quiet cooking session and they did brilliantly. The recipe was just the right level of complicated and looked so impressive in their plastic boxes to take home. They enjoyed the 'guess the fruit' game - pomegranet, passion fruit, lychees, papaya. My husband mischeiveously asked me afterwards if I taught them about similies in Song of Songs ;) I assured him I did not. And they enjoyed the fruit craft with cocktail sticks/umbrellas and bits of melon and kiwi cut with cookie cutters.

I was also chuffed that a few days beforehand, one of my kids came up to me in the playground to ask what they were making and when I told her, ran off to tell her little group of friends (who are also members) who listened in elated attentiveness to what we were making. I love the fact that I'm responsible for creating such excitement for them.

All that said, they were still extremely giddy after washing up. Because they finishing clearing up at different times, this means they end up in the church lounge just messing about while we wait for the slower ones. We've had an idea though! We're going to set up an activity for them to do after washing up in the hope that will keep them focused. I'm very grateful that my project mentor is a teacher. She says this is all very normal for working of kids of this age!

I'm still chewing over what will happen after this phase draws to a close. I'd love to build on but I simply don't know yet whether we have enough resource (by that I mean volunteers, interest, funding again for next year).

I'm also aware of the difficulty of assessing whether a project has worked or not. By what criteria do you decide? Also, 6 months is a very short time-frame when building trusted relationships with a lot of families you didn't know at the start.
Way too short.